


come back to me.

by SeeThemFlying



Series: Unspoken [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: As does his dick but that is another question entirely, Basically this is all unresolved, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Jaime is pining, Jaime's heart has a boner, One Shot, Post Lady Stoneheart, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, book canon, but he is in two minds about whether he realises it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:41:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27610828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeeThemFlying/pseuds/SeeThemFlying
Summary: Lost in the woods after their confrontation with Lady Stoneheart, Jaime tries to comfort a broken Brienne.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: Unspoken [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2024483
Comments: 66
Kudos: 238





	come back to me.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [forpeaches (bluecarrot)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/gifts).



> So, I watched Casino Royale this evening, which includes a scene where James Bond comforts Vesper in the shower after she sees some people die. I ended up thinking "oooh, what if I wrote something similar for JB?" This is the result.
> 
> It is unbeta'd and also not particularly well thought out. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> This is for forpeaches (bluecarrot) because I know they like sad things.

The Brotherhood had scattered like birds disturbed by a child throwing stones the second Stoneheart had died. Those who had been complicit in her atrocities feared reprisals, while those who had been longing to be free finally spread their wings. It left the cave eerily quiet, devoid of everything but the sound of her gentle tears.

 _Brienne's_ tears.

"Wench..."

"My name is _not_ wench," she said as Oathkeeper went clattering to the floor, Stoneheart's blood slick against the blade. "It is _Brienne._ "

"Brienne, then," he corrected swiftly. He misliked her tone and sought to quickly mend the breach. Holding out his hand, Jaime tried again. "Come, we must go."

Turning away from the dead revenant lying as if crucified on the cave's floor, Brienne looked at him for the first time. Her sapphire eyes swam with tears, leaving Jaime to wonder whether the waters of Tarth really were the most expressive blue to be found on the island.

She shook her head. "I can't... I can't leave her."

"You can. She left you first," he insisted. At his disarming pronouncement, Brienne's expression changed from sullen grief to one of naked hesitancy. Jaime took his chance. "Come, Brienne. Come."

Taking one last glance down at Lady Catelyn's shadow, Brienne nodded stiffly, retrieved Oathkeeper from the floor, took his hand, and followed him out the cave.

They found an abandoned forester’s hut in the woods not long after.

"We'll stay here for the night," said Hyle gruffly, taking charge of the group's silence to proclaim himself king. "It will offer us a bit of warmth, especially if the boy can light a fire."

Jaime looked at Podrick. He had not spoken since they left the cave, and he seemed to have no intention of starting now.

His silence made Hyle sigh, and he pulled gruffly at his collar in irritation. "Or _I_ will light a fire. There is no good us all freezing. I think there will be snow tonight."

Feeling vaguely annoyed by this intruder's certainty, Jaime glanced back at Brienne who was traipsing a few steps behind him. Oathkeeper was in her hand, still covered in her lady's blood. Normally, Brienne would loudly proclaim her own divining on the vagaries of the weather, but today she remained silent.

She had no words, no objections, no... _nothing._

It made Jaime's chest ache.

In spite of Ser Hyle's insistence that Podrick would make a fire, Jaime rapidly came to understand that it certainly would not be the case. Just like Brienne, the boy wore a distant stare, gazing at something Jaime could not see, something he could _never_ see. Yet while Pod seemed scared of whatever he saw, Brienne was evidently wracked with guilt. While she would not look at anyone else in the hut, she would stare at the monster in the distance - invisible but oppressive - and then flick her eyes back to her bloody sword.

She had not yet cleaned it.

Jaime wanted to shout at her, to grab her shoulders and scream until his wench came back to him. He had no use for _this_ Brienne. He wanted to grin smugly as she complained about his selfishness, to see her flush with anger, or even just hear her voice. He wanted _her._

 _I want you back, Brienne,_ he thought. _Where have you gone?_

_Come back to me._

_Come back._

In the end, Jaime and Hyle left Brienne and Podrick in the hut and went to collect kindling for the fire themselves. Although Hyle had suffered just as much as Podrick, there was a robustness about him that the young squire lacked. It made Jaime quite irritated, because it was a skill that he had never possessed. For Jaime Lannister, small wounds had always cut the deepest.

"I am going to marry her, you know," said Hyle, as they trudged through the undergrowth looking for dry twigs.

Jaime snapped his head around. "Who?"

"Lady Brienne," snorted the hedge knight. "You didn't think I was going to pledge my troth to young Pod, did you?"

"No, it is just..."

 _She will not marry you,_ thought Jaime bitterly, his anger swelling in his chest like wildfire. _Brienne deserves better, she deserves..._

"What?"

Jaime looked down at the ground. None of the sticks beneath his feet were dry enough for a fire and, to his immense irritation, they would probably be searching for some time more given how few they had managed to collect between them.

"It's nothing."

"Are you sure?" asked Hyle. His tone was as pointed as a knife. "Because I was wondering..."

"What?"

At the repetition, Hyle gave Jaime an almost jesting smile. "I was wondering whether you had a claim."

"On what?"

"The lady."

Almost tripping over his own feet, Jaime snorted with laughter. "Gods no! I am the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and she's..."

 _Brienne._

"I know she is not much to look at," said Hyle, as if this was a response to a question that Jaime had asked, "but she has an island, and sapphires... and she is really quite companionable when you think about it."

Jaime nodded. He remembered how gently she had trimmed his beard at Harrenhal, then brushed his hair for good measure. Her fingers had danced across his scalp, drawing almost imperceptible circles against his skin, and it had been the first kind touch in a year... the first kind touch _ever._ Even the memory alone sometimes made him melt.

"Yes," he said wistfully. "She is very companionable. Brienne would make a good wife."

 _Warm and big and freckly with arms like tree trunks._ Jaime suddenly found himself wondering what it would feel like to sleep in her arms, their bodies pressed together. She would be nervous, at first, all wide-eyed innocence, but then he would part her legs and rest between them, telling her everything would be well in the morning. _If you are the Kingslayer's whore, we should be a pair,_ he would whisper, kissing her temple. _I'll be your whore in return._ Jaime did not know whether that offer would amuse or frighten her.

On dangerous ground, he shook those thoughts away when Hyle spoke again.

"That is why I intend to take her now when I have a chance," grinned Hyle. "A hedge knight and an heiress; we are not such a bad match, even though she nearly got me killed." Hyle was smiling and treating the situation so lightly that it left Jaime overcome with a desire to punch out every single one of his pearly white teeth...

... but he didn't, and the two of them continued to search for kindling, Brienne standing between them as if she was really beside them and not back in the forester's hut.

With a fire alight in the grate, the four of them slept on the floor that night, listening to the sound of the wind and snow outside. Jaime had wanted to sleep next to Brienne so he could hold her hand at least, but she took a spot on the other side of the room away from the rest of them, the long line of her back the partition wall.

Although his heart was aching, Jaime somehow managed to sigh, roll over, and attempt to go to sleep.

He woke up a few hours later completely in darkness apart from the orange embers in the grate and the silver moonlight coming in through the cracks in the door. Blinking, he tried to adjust himself to the lack of light, and the moment he did so he discovered something he would have never anticipated.

Brienne was gone.

Sitting bolt upright, Jaime looked around the room panickily. It was dangerous in the forest alone at night, and he was scared she might already be lost. His other companions did not seem to mind as Hyle and Pod were both asleep, the former letting out obnoxious little snores, and it was clear that neither of them had moved since they had first laid down. Not caring if he disturbed them, Jaime got to his feet.

_I have to find her, stupid wench._

_Come back to me._

He found her under a tree a few minutes’ walk away, her hair bathed in moonlight and snowflakes. Immobile, with her back rigidly lined up against the tree, Brienne did not react when he called her name, nor when he spoke to her more informally.

"Wench, it is bloody cold out here. You should come inside."

She shook her head but offered him no more than her tears. Just her tears.

They cut like a knife.

When Jaime sat down beside her, he noticed her clothes and hair were damp from the snow and she was shivering slightly. As he was the only warmth that could be hers in this dark night, Brienne shuffled closer to him, resting her head against his shoulder. She did it tentatively, fearfully, as if measuring whether he wanted it. He could see it took bravery for her to make such a move.

"Yes," he whispered.

It was all Brienne needed to rest one large, freckled hand on his bicep. He tried to ignore the fact that he was growing aroused by gazing into her eyes, which were reminders of her heartbreak. Thoughts of dead women were likely to kill any chance of an inconvenient erection.

"I killed her," she said.

"You did not."

"I did," Brienne said more firmly, the words almost choking her. "I gutted her belly to throat and watched her die. What is that but murder?"

 _Love,_ he thought.

"That was not Lady Catelyn," he insisted, as more snowflakes fell onto her hair, crowning her a queen. "That was a revenant, an echo... an echo of an echo. You were just silencing the ricochet."

Brienne shook her head, her nose nuzzling into his arm. "There is blood everywhere," she said. Her voice was like cracking ice. "So much blood... all over... all over my hands... and I can't clean it off."

Reaching out, Jaime took the freckled hand that was resting in her lap and drew it to his lips. It was amazing how easy it was to suck the tips of her fingers into his mouth, pressing his tongue against the pads. He worked at each one slowly, not caring when she let out a little squeak of shock at the intimacy, before melting into his touch. Once he had finished, he took her hand in his and held on tight.

"There you go. There is no blood now. All gone."

A tear rolled down her cheek. It took all his self-resolve not to kiss it away.

As they gazed into each other's eyes, Brienne bit her bottom lip and her cheeks flushed crimson. With the snowflakes crowning her hair, she looked both the lily and the rose. He suddenly wondered whether he should pray.

"I'm cold Jaime. So cold."

"Hush," he whispered, moving his arms to offer an embrace. "Come here, wench. Come back to me."

To his immense relief, Brienne came quite willingly, letting him wrap himself around her as she rested her head against his chest. Her weight against him was heavy, but sure, and he felt suddenly conscious of the fact he needed to loosen the laces on his breeches. He sighed. Was there anything more beautiful that this? A lady and a knight lost in the woods needing comfort from a man who could never deserve her. Jaime kissed the crown of her head.

 _I'll tell her tomorrow,_ he thought.

It was rude to keep such feelings to himself, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. I would love to hear what you think in the form of a comment or kudos!


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